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“Afrofuturism as Creative Empowerment” by Ytasha Womack

Feminist Technics, Queer Machines: Inventing Better Futures was a day-long conference hosted by IGSF in November 2014 as a part of the HTMlles 11: Zer0 Future Festival. The HTMlles is an international platform dedicated to the presentation of women’s, trans and gender non-conforming artists’ independent media artworks in a transdisciplinary environment that strives for anti-oppression. The keynote speaker for the conference was Ytasha Womack. Here, she is introduced by Sophie Le-Phat Ho from HTMlles. After her presentation, tobias c. van Veen facilitates a conversation about her current and future projects.

It was in a nondescript flat, wooden box in the basement, a leftover from previous tenants now long gone. Or the tenants who came of left before the last couple who lived here. Rosalind couldn’t really tell, nor was she particularly interested in dragging that heavy box upstairs to take to the corner for trash day. Something about the box piqued her curiosity, though, especially the light that seemed to shine through one of the uncovered edges.

It took her an hour to pull and drag the box up the wooden stairs.

After finding a hammer, she flipped it to the prong side and began pulling out the nails, carefully tossing them in a neat pile. The wood seemed old, and gave way to her strength as she pulled out a large, round pane of stained glass. Looking at the wooden walls in the living room and dining room and the square window panes, it occurred to Rosalind that this could not have been installed in the house because it was too big for any house. It belonged to a church, perhaps a church long gone.

As she studied the design and colors, she noted the familiar image of the Virgin Mary and Child, how the pane seemed to capture the sunlight coming into the kitchen as if to store its ray like a solar panel. The room began to fill with a warm glow, and the air was suddenly fragrant with the smell of fresh roses. As Rosalind began to fill with a certain and familiar quiver of her state of “tipsy,” it occurred to her that no church would have commissioned such a work for their sanctuary, for it would not have been deemed acceptable for the masses.

What was once thought to be basement junk was now a center of attention in her living room as found art to outsiders who visited her as it hung on her wall seeming to have its own source of light even as the sun set outside.

To be honest, I’m not sure my existence here is proof that I am alive. I could be in some sort of Purgatory. Food and water tends to be whatever I find on this island, and the cave I use for rest is warm–though strangely empty of inhabitants I would expect in a dark place in the wild.

But no one else and nothing else living beyond plants exists here. The sun never fully rises or sets. It hovers, as if time itself is waiting for something.

I remember life before the here that is now.

I remember falling asleep at night, waking up to go to campus for a meeting, and seeing/feeling heat as if the sun itself had landed in the middle of town. I remember the crush of debris and white-hot air as the megaton warhead exploded and my skin began to boil–then there was here.

He expected to see a candle when he crouched to the ground to pick it up, but no, it was a free standing flame inside a lattice patterned canister in the middle of the park at night. The flame seemed to dance back and forth as he picked up the metal frame as if to speak to him. He looked at his German Shepherd companion keeping him company during his night walk and noticed the hair flailing out from his tail as he slowly backed away as if in silent alarm. The man returned the light to the ground and also began to back away, suddenly feeling dizzy and slightly panicked. The light began to ascend from its cage like a firefly and inch its way toward the man and his dog as they turned back to the narrow path towards home. Both wind and feet rustled through the forest as they fled from uncontrolled flames that now consumed dry branches and leaves left in their wake.

It’s a virus, something that traveled through several layers of probable realities as a result of an experiment launched by a group of physicists in Switzerland. The word “virus” is about as close a term as one could use to refer to or at least approximate what has happened to digital photography, film, music, and sound. The “virus” has somehow rendered our actuality more porous than its previous state of stability, reworking digital codes of compressed audio and visual data into multi-dimensional portals.

Infected computers have been quarantined at a secret facility near the port, but as the virus is already in the cloud, the virtual world is taking on a version of reality not yet understood by most physicists or IT specialists. Every single picture, movie clip, and sound clip is now subject to the virus’ rewiring of its nature into a separate actualization. Worse, some of these realities are pushing into our reality.

I have seen long-dead relatives appear in my living room, wearing the same clothes they wore when the photos were snapped. They aren’t quite flesh, but more than ghosts. My grandmother encountered a much younger version of herself in my hallway, much to her own shock. I have ex-boyfriends fighting each other, fading in and out with each emotional flare-up.

My car is now gassed up for a long trip, something I should have done when my neighbors escaped from a slightly psychotic uncle with a penchant for knives. I just have to find a way to use my driver’s license without my previous version of myself sliding out from my purse.

#30Days
You find a strange blue crystal on your driveway one evening while picking up the newspaper. You take it inside and placed it in a glass of warm water, thinking it to be a nice stone to use in your endless collection of homemade jewelry sitting in your bedroom. It sits on your window shelf over the kitchen sink for about five days, upon which you, after forgetting its existence, glance up at the glass while washing dishes. You almost jump back at what you see.

Two crystals now occupy the glass, and two others are now sitting on the shelf. You pick up the glass, and, using paper towels, scoop up the other crystals, panicking at what seems to be an impossibility. Each crystal is equal in size and each one now seems to cast a reddish hue when close to each other. You dump it all into a small plastic bag, including the glass of water. You dump it all into the green garbage container you’ve already rolled out to the curb for the early morning garbage guys. It takes four men to lift the garbage container into the truck to dump out the trash.

Kneeling on your couch cushions, you peek through your living room curtains to see them step back at the container’s contents mixing with the neighborhood’s trash: dozens and dozens of crystals that seem to glow like fireflies. You close the curtain and slowly stand up, as you turn around to see something you don’t want to see: a single crystal sitting in the middle of your living room carpet, turning red, then black as it levitates up to the height of your face.

The elevator stood at the far end of the ticketing and refreshments area of Gideon Cinema, a movie theater housed on the seventh floor of Galleria Fantasia. The room was filled with movie goers eager to depart into the night after being subjected to two hours of non-stop shooting, bombings, exploding body parts, as well as an endless stream of completely gratuitous and unnecessary use of expletives. For Margo and Jack, the movie was background noise to the real purpose of their presence in the theater, which was discussing strategies for battling the Phorzhicoa and taking back their territory. The sounds of the movie and the audience’s consumption of sweet and salty junk food masked the telepathic exchange.

Margo and Jack stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the Street Level. The other moviegoers stood back from the elevator car, staring at Margo and Jack with more than a little trepidation. The doors slammed shut, and the elevator quietly slipped down the shaft towards the Street Level. Margo opened her mouth to ask Jack what just happened, but hesitated before closing it and deciding to wait until leaving the building.

The doors of the elevator opened, and with that, Margo and Jack stepped out onto the marbled floors of the shopping center’s entrance. A six-year-old boy who had walked a few steps up from his mother pointed to the space behind the couple and giggled, as he said, “Pretty!” Margo and Jack smiled and waved as they walked past to the exit.

After seeing them walk through the revolving door, the boy turned to his mother and with a smile he said one sentence: “the people behind the boy and girl got wings, Mommy!”